Dirty Little Secrets
by Xchy
Summary: We are your friends. You see us every day but do not know who we are. Could you live with yourself if you knew what we sacrified for you?


So.

Iruka says I have to keep this stupid thing, keep writing in it. Says that, when it's finished, it'll be sent off to the Library, shelved under my clan name, and used for future reference.

And hey, if I get my goal, this thing will be worth its weight in gold. Maybe more. You can buy a lot of ramen with that much money.

Sorry, got sidetracked. Ignore the drool spots on the page, they're completely coincidental. Nothing to do with the sweet, delicious scent of ramen, the warm salty taste on your tongue…

**ooo**

Well, now that I've eaten, I can continue. Iruka says that I should write down what I know about our career, our duty. He says it's important to have a written record of this stuff, and that it'll also help me learn this stuff better.

So, first thing's first. I'm a ninja. No, we don't go around in black, wearing masks and hoods and funny slippers. We look just like an ordinary person. Except we can kill you without making a sound, run on walls and walk on water. We can breathe poison, punch through rocks, and bend steel with our bare hands. Well, that's what I'm told, anyways. I'm struggling with walking on walls still.

But hey, Iruka can sit on the ceiling to give his lessons. According to him, we use an energy called _chakra_ to do all this stuff. Way back when, way before we even knew there were places other than the Elemental Countries, ninja declared their allegiances openly, and flung fire and lightning at each other in the open.

Nowadays that sort of thing is likely to get you busted real quick. No-one knows that we can do that stuff anymore, and, to be honest, no-one _can_ do it anymore. We've lost the ability to make big explosions without technological aid, but in return we've become ever stealthier, ever deadlier.

There are fewer of us than ever – a consequence of the training system, I imagine. You can only become a ninja through extensive, one-on-one training. It also runs in families – my teammate Sakura is a rare exception – and it's traditional for the parents to train their children. The problem is that our lifestyle lends itself to being brief and brutal, and fewer and fewer ninja are having children.

Hence Sakura. She's part of the first wave of an experimental program which recruits young children with potential. Her performance will influence the entire future of our organization. Pretty big burden, but she's a smart girl, she can take it.

You'll be wondering by now if Iruka is my dad. That's a toughie. Legally, yes, he's my father. He adopted me when I was very young. However, my real parents were highly respected ninja who died on a mission gone wrong – you've heard of the Incident, I assure you, it's the best example of how to go out with a bang ever. And they finished the mission, even though they died doing it. It earned them a lot of posthumous respect, which is saying something, as my dad was the Hokage at the time.

Yeah, Uzumaki Naruto, son of Uzumaki Kushina and Namikaze Minato. That's me. Don't tell anyone, though. My name's been kept as my mother's due to certain enemies of my father being rather more alive than he is. He earned himself quite a reputation – being the mysterious leader of all ninja in Fire country makes you infamous amongst those of our kind who hail from other countries.

Anyways, I was getting onto what we actually do. Well, we sneak, we spy, we assassinate. That's the traditional set anyways. We're sort of like the secret police force of Fire country. Except we don't work for the government, save incidentally. You kill a hundred people, one of them has to have pissed off the people in charge, you know? We work to protect the people of Fire country from enemies without and within. The president dies? We may have had a little to do with that. A missile base in Lightning country detonates its payload while the missiles are still inside? Could be us again.

Don't think we're the only country with such a force, though – every Elemental Country possesses a ninja network, though the smaller principalities my only have a couple of ninja. Wave, for example has only one ninja to keep an eye on the whole place. Considering it's a small island, that's about right. There's only a few hundred ninja total in Fire country, and the population is in the millions.

We have to blend in with the civilians. Which brings me to my least favourite part of being a ninja – going to school. I have to get a proper education. I'm expected to graduate from high school and go to university to pick up a degree, at least if I want to become Hokage. No unskilled labour in _this_ force. And since I'm sixteen, that means I'm stuck in high school. I hate high school. Oh, the people tend to be alright, especially when you put the first one who tries to bully you through a window, but all the writing and reading and maths and book learning is ridiculous.

And they frown on it if you take out a teacher for giving you bad grades. I've done it once, but I had good reason too. The guy – Mizuki - was a dick. He was deliberately sabotaging my education, but Iruka said I had to put up with it, learn a lesson about how to go around people who try to stop me. I had to deal with him all year, and the bastard nearly made me fail it. I _did_ fail his class, even though I put in twice the effort I did for all the others.

His offer of "remedial classes", made with a hand on my thigh and a wink, was what tipped the issue, especially as I was only 12 at the time. He was found the next week, drowned in his bathtub. Seemed like he'd thought it was a good idea to drink and bathe. Iruka bought me deluxe ramen for a month for that hit. There was a bounty on the bastard, seemed like I wasn't the first one he'd tried it on.

Yeah, we collect bounties. Not deliberately, but if a target has money on their head, we'll call it in. No point wasting an opportunity to boost the war chests, you see. And the organization pays for everything. You get injured, we have a private hospital where you can get the best treatment available free of charge. You lose the job you're holding as cover, we'll set you up with a new one. You die, leaving your wife and kids without support? We move in, set them up for life, and train the kids if they're suitable candidates.

There's a cost, of course. You can't refuse missions. You get spotted? We kill you and anyone in your immediate family old enough to remember you, and set it up so that you look like an independent contractor, your kids get taken into custody of one of our people and trained up. You get caught? Well, we're ninja. Sneaking into a prison is easy. You'll be dead before the dawn breaks, unless you can escape and kill all the witnesses. You betray us? Well, that gets _messy_. Anyone you've ever met who is not a ninja gets erased. Any ninja you interacted with gets taken into interrogation. We mind-wipe any kids of yours young enough to survive the process, and kill any that are too old.

I hate it when someone betrays us. It takes weeks to get the blood out, and I always feel dirty for months afterwards. Thankfully, it's rare, and I haven't had to do the kids yet, as that is usually trusted to a local commander.

Our local commander is Hatake Kakashi, who was a student of my father. He's helped in my training occasionally, but he's a busy guy. His cover job is a nightclub owner, which gives him the freedom to move about erratically and throw about large wads of cash as needed. He's one of the few ninja known about by every ninja in Fire country, as he is _the_ man to emulate if you want to be an assassination specialist.

My team live in the city, and were all brought up and trained here. Haruno Sakura, our resident egghead, lives with her civilian parents. They don't know that she's a ninja, which is good, because it means we don't need to kill them. She's our brains, computer expert, and medic. She can also crush rock with her bare hands, but I try not to think too hard about that. She excels in making a mission look accidental.

Uchiha Sasuke, a.k.a. The Bastard, is our sniper. He lives with Kakashi, ever since his older brother went rogue and killed his entire family. He went a bit crazy when we were younger, tried to leave, but after a little Persuasion and Diplomacy – yes, Sakura named my right and left fists that, saying that I did all my talking with them – I managed to get him to stay. He's following in Kakashi's footsteps, specializing in assassination and long-range support. I trust him with my life, which is good, because The Bastard has to make sure I don't die on a regular basis. He's also got these freaky eyes which allow him to predict movement – cheating, in my opinion, but hey, he claims it's genetic.

And then there's me. Uzumaki Naruto, future Hokage. I'm the demolitions and technical guy. I can strip an engine and put it together again blindfolded, and then use it to blow something up. I'm the heavy – I can soak more than a few hits thanks to a little present left by my father – and when a mission requires someone to get up close and personal, I'm the go-to guy. I also specialize in "open infiltration", as Jiraiya calls it. That means I approach the target in broad daylight, chat, gain their confidence, then stick around after the job until all suspicion has died down. It requires balls of solid steel, and the ability to empathize with the target to a degree. The Bastard can't manage it, cold son of a bitch that he is, and Sakura empathizes a little too much, making her hesitate before the execution of the mission, but I've got the perfect balance.

I'm making it sound like assassination is all we do. To tell the truth, it's the least part of our jobs, but taking a life is a big deal, even to me, and so it seems like we spend all our time doing so. Most of the rest of the time we're doing simple peacekeeping – infiltrating fringe groups to make sure they aren't planning to do crazy shit, helping out when a natural disaster hits (We have the resources and connections to get aid there before the government, and some of our people can even predict when the disasters will happen, so we can get things moving before the problem even occurs), and, hell, helping old ladies cross the street.

We work in that corner shop you visit after school. We hand you your fast food. We run your favourite bowling alley. We sit next to you in class. We walk amongst you and none of you can ever know what we sacrifice to protect you. We are your best friends, and we are your worst enemies. But most of all, we are ninja.


End file.
